History may be written by the victors, as Winston Churchill is said to have observed, but the opening up of archives can threaten a nation every bit as much as the unearthing of mass graves.

That danger explains a decision quietly taken last month by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to extend by an additional 20 years the country’s 50-year rule for the release of sensitive documents.

The new 70-year disclosure rule is the government’s response to Israeli journalists who have been seeking through Israel’s courts to gain access to documents that should already be declassified, especially those concerning the 1948 war, which established Israel, and the 1956 Suez crisis.

The state’s chief archivist says ....

Quite what such phrases mean was illustrated by the findings of a recent investigation by an Israeli newspaper. Haaretz revisited the Six Day War of 1967, in which Israel seized not only the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, but also a significant corner of Syria known as the Golan Heights, which Israel still refuses to relinquish.

The consensus in Israel is that the country’s right to hold on to the Golan is even stronger than its right to the West Bank. ...

(snip)

However, a very different picture emerges from Haaretz‘s interviews with the participants. These insiders say that all but 6,000 of the Golan’s 130,000 civilians were either terrorized or physically forced out, some of them long after the fighting finished. An army document reveals a plan to clear the area of the Syrian population, with only the exception of the Golan Druze, so as not to upset relations with the loyal Druze community inside Israel.

(snip)

... methodical and wholesale ethnic cleansing .... ...

What is so intriguing about the newspaper’s version of the Golan’s capture is the degree to which it echoes the revised accounts of the 1948 war that have been written by later generations of Israeli historians. ...

The new material was explosive enough. It undermined Israel’s traditional narrative of 1948, in which the Palestinians were said to have left voluntarily ....

(snip)

One document in particular, Plan Dalet, demonstrated the army’s intention to expel the Palestinians from their homeland. ...

Ethnic cleansing is the common theme of both these Israeli conquests. ...

But full disclosure of these myth-shattering documents may be the precondition for peace. ...

(snip)

Genuine peacemakers should be demanding that the doors to the archives be thrown open immediately. ...

John Pilger begins his article with some very interesting historical examples of the use of propaganda, including fear-mongering kind, to fool the public, and a little information about "Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud," who "is said to have invented modern propaganda". Then the rest of the article is about current and recent propaganda of deception.

Excerpting some of his article:

(snip)

False reality: The last US combat troops have left Iraq "as promised, on schedule", according to President Barack Obama. ...

Fact: They have not left. At least 50,000 troops will continue to operate from 94 bases. American air assaults are unchanged, as are special forces' assassinations. The number of "military contractors" is 100,000 and rising. Most Iraqi oil is now under direct foreign control.

False reality: BBC presenters have described the departing US troops as a "sort of victorious army" that has achieved "a remarkable change in [Iraq's] fortunes". Their commander, General David Petraeus, is a "celebrity", "charming", "savvy" and "remarkable".

Fact: There is no victory of any sort. There is a catastrophic disaster, and attempts to present it as otherwise are a model of Bernays's campaign to "rebrand" the slaughter of the First World War as "necessary" and "noble". In 1980, Ronald Reagan, running for president, rebranded the invasion of Vietnam, in which up to three million people died, as a "noble cause", a theme taken up enthusiastically by Hollywood. Today's Iraq war movies have a similar purging theme: the invader as both idealist and victim.

(snip)

False reality: The British economy has a deficit of billions which must be reduced with cuts in public services and regressive taxation, in a spirit of "we're all in this together".

Fact: We are not in this together. What is remarkable about this PR triumph is that only 18 months ago, the diametric opposite filled TV screens and front pages. Then, in a state of shock, truth became unavoidable, if briefly. ...

Fact: Miliband, like his brother and almost all those standing for the Labour leadership, is immersed in the effluent of New Labour. As a New Labour MP and minister, he did not refuse to serve under Blair or to speak out against Labour's persistent warmongering. ...

The good news is that false realities often fail when the public trusts its own critical intelligence. ...

John Kozy is a US Army veteran of the Korean war and, since then, a "professor of philosophy and logic", retired.

His very good and interesting article uses US history of the Civil War not really having gained much, if anything, for the US, and the history of Democrats versus Republicans, including the historical "Dixiecrats", to argue that change, lasting good change, can't be achieved through force. And he also refers to far older history of the Roman Empire, Napolean, "the Franco-Prussian War", Austria against the Serbs in 1914, and other examples.

He quotes Gandhi's reality-based view:

Nations that have started wars with the psychological certainty of winning rarely have, and when they have, the results were rarely lasting or those sought. As Gandhi once observed, “Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.”

He also gives examples to illustrate that the winners are also losers, which is something like I've said about the present wars when saying that no one can benefit from these crimes. I've said the same thing about Israel in its genocidal, ethinic-cleansing wars against innocent Palestinians and the people of Lebanon, among others, but especially these two populations.

How could it be possible to truly benefit from crimes against humanity? It is [not] possible to [benefit] from such crimes. War profiteers and economic predators, as well as many their supporters with sufficient money to invest, profit, but it only is monetary profit. There's no authentic benefit, for there is absolutely nothing beneficial involved. If it wakes people up to such dark realities of our leadership, then waking up will be beneficial, but it clearly isn't happening in any beneficial way(s).

Even if the US could win the wars it's been leading and could achieve global dominance, could this then be something that really benefits the guilty ruling elites of the US, or Americans, or anyone else? Absolutely not. Profiting is not the same thing as benefiting, unless the profits are gained in beneficial ways, which only happens when injustice is not involved.

One of my "thumb" measures is that a poor person can benefit by successfully stealing from the wealthy, for then the poor person can buy food, clothing, and other necessities, while the wealthy or sufficiently wealthy who are robbed suffer no real, measurable injustices; no noteworthy injustices.

We have the very opposite being committed by our so-called leadership; political, military, economic, and corporate leadership. And neither they nor we can benefit from their or any other crimes against humanity. Whether they're extreme, or not, no one can truly benefit from any crimes against humanity; and the poor stealing from the rich and relatively rich without committing any real crimes against persons is not a crime against humanity even if it was large numbers of the poor doing this. The poor are usually poor because of crimes of the rich and relatively rich; unjustifiable crimes.

Wars of aggression are the supreme international crime because they inherently include all or nearly all other crimes against humanity. Only Hell, which has no need for money, could "benefit" from this.

Like David Swanson has been saying, no war has ever been justifiable, and none can ever be justified; only defense is justifiable. A side that is aggressed and wins will of course benefit, though it evidently happens at great cost, but not one the side on the defense chose. The war is due to the aggressors and they will lose even when they appear to win.

And the war makers will remain prosecutable for as long as they live. This, alone, doesn't sound like a real winning position to be in, imo.

Anyway, John Kozy's article provides very interesting historical analysis, plenty of analogies. One of the last things he says is the following.

People need to realize that after a war, things are never the same as they were before, and that even the winners rarely get what they fight for. War is a fool's errand in pursuit of ephemera.

Like he says, people who believe that Iraqis and Afghans will change in ways to make the US really win these wars, if the US wins them in any sense at all, that is, are foolish; while I'd add [stupid], moronic. These populations are [not] going to forget. Real North American Indians, f.e., also haven't forgotten. Even if we tend to be highly forgetful of them, they have not forgotten the real history of what was done to them. Those who let themselves be co-opted, often traitors, are not Indians I refer to as [real] NA Indians. The real ones have not allowed themselves to be co-opted. They remain justly proud, righteous, and they are the ones who are right; and they're are not about to forget.

Haitians are not going to forget. The Congolese are not going to forget. Et cetera.

If anyone forgets, then it is the populations of the war-making and profiteering countries that do; and we definitely never should.

John Kozy concludes:

Unfortunately, history teaches its lessons to only those willing to learn, and the American oligarchy shows no signs of having such willingness.

James Fergusson returns after three years to Chak, just 40 miles from Kabul, to find the Taliban's grip is far stronger than the West will admit

(snip)

Three years ago, the Taliban's control over this district, Chak, and the 112,000 Pashtun farmers who live here, was restricted to the hours of darkness – although the local commander, Abdullah, vowed to me that he would soon be in full control. As I am quickly to discover, this was no idle boast. In Chak, the Karzai government has in effect given up and handed over to the Taliban. Abdullah, still in charge, even collects taxes. His men issue receipts using stolen government stationery that is headed "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan"; with commendable parsimony they simply cross out the word "Republic" and insert "Emirate", the emir in question being the Taliban's spiritual leader, Mullah Omar.

The most astonishing thing about this rebel district – and for Nato leaders meeting in Lisbon this week, a deeply troubling one – is that Chak is not in war-torn Helmand or Kandahar but in Wardak province, a scant 40 miles south-west of Kabul. Nato commanders have repeatedly claimed that the Taliban are on the back foot following this year's US troop surge. Mid-level insurgency commanders, they say, have been removed from the battlefield in "industrial" quantities since the 2010 campaign began. And yet Abdullah, operating within Katyusha rocket range of the capital – and with a $500,000 bounty on his head – has managed to evade coalition forces for almost four years. If Chak is in any way typical of developments in other rural districts – and Afghanistan has hundreds of isolated valley communities just like this one – then Nato's military strategy could be in serious difficulty.

(snip)

Kabul, Abdullah insists, controls just one square kilometre around the district centre; the rest of Chak belongs to the Taliban. ...

(snip)

... The only way in for invaders is by helicopter, therefore – and since the summer, US special forces have launched airborne kill or capture raids in the district "almost every night". ...

The effect of these night raids on Abdullah's command structure has been negligible, but the same cannot be said for the effect on public opinion. Dozens of blameless locals have allegedly been killed by "the Americans". ... and it is clear that these attacks have done nothing but bolster support for the insurgents. ...

Abdullah and his men seem to thrive under the threat of sudden death, as though infected by a kind of joie de guerre. He says it is the ambition of all of them to die as ghazi – that is, as martyrs, in battle against the infidel. "It is our religious duty to resist you foreigners," he tells me – just as he did in 2007. "You must understand that we will never stop fighting you – never."

The prospect of a negotiated peace is dismissed almost outright. All this talk of a political settlement with Karzai... (sic) it is all tricks and propaganda," he says. "The Taliban will not negotiate with anyone until all foreign troops have left." His men are genuinely perplexed by General Petraeus's assertion that Nato's purpose in Afghanistan is to prevent the re-establishment of al-Qa'ida. "There were some foreign fighters in Chak for a while last year," Mullah Naim recalls, "Arabs, Chechens, Pakistanis. But they were fighting under the Taliban, obeying our orders. They were nothing to do with al-Qa'ida. There are no al-Qa'ida fighters in Afghanistan any more. I have fought in the south and in the east as well as here. In seven years of operations I have not seen a single al-Qa'ida fighter. Not one."

The above article seems to likely be mostly true, but I wonder if there's anything untrue in it. If not, then the article provided me with some humor and this or these parts probably aren't found in the text I excerpted. It's a short article, but I left out half or more of it.

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